Who can be awarded a Nobel Prize?

Let's start with an overview of the laureates who were awarded a Nobel Prize in the past 3 years:

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So, it's not just people who can get awards, there are organizations too?

Indeed, there are two types of laureates - people and organizations, but the former are far more numerous, as you can see below:

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how do the nobel prize awards look over the years?

Let's dive deeper - a closer look at the history of the Nobel Prize reveals the impact of 2 major events, namely, the two world wars of the previous century, which saw a significant decrease (WWI) or, worse, a complete absence (WWII) of awards as seen in the timeline below.

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What other changes does following Nobel Prize trends across the years reveal about potential directions the world is going in?

For starters, from the timeline above, we can see that the number of prizes awarded has almost doubled since its beginnings, from an average of 7 prizes per year in its first half a decade, to over 12 in the past few years.

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Why is that? Is it easier to win a Nobel Prize today than it was back then?

Not at all, on the contrary perhaps, as we will later see.

Instead, this could be explained by the fact that in the first half of the 20th century there were only around 1000 physicists, as Gustav Källstrand, a senior curator at the Nobel Museum, stated, while today there are an estimated one million out there. What this means is that there were far fewer people back then who could be awarded a Nobel Prize, and the numbers show that.

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Has this fact of there being fewer scientists in the world back then had any other implications on Nobel Prize trends?

Yes, let's take a look at the two graphs below, a line chart revealing how the average laureate award age has changed through the years, and a bar chart showing fields and age groups with most laureates:

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One of the first things that we can take away from the charts above, is that, especially in traditional sciences (Medicine, Physics, Chemistry), there has been a trend of laureates winning prizes later in life. If the average age of those who won an award in the first part of the previous century was around 50 years old, now the average is 65.

We have more, many more scientists in the world today than we did back then, and therefore the competition is much higher.
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Wait, so you don't get a Nobel Prize immediately after your pioneering work is complete? Doesn't making an important discovery automatically grant you an award the following year?

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With thousands of people making discoveries every year, and a really high validation standard from the Nobel Prize committee, it can take many years for someone to win an award.

The violin graph below puts emphasis on just that - the average time between publishing an article and getting recognized with a Nobel Prize in traditional sciences:

The average number of years between the publication of the article and getting an award in Chemistry and Medicine is 17 years, while in Physics it's over 18 years.

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So what's up with these fields, and why do they see longer waiting times than the other three fields (Economic Sciences, Literature and Peace)?

Once again, general events in the history of the last century show up in the Nobel Prize numbers, given that the first part of the 20th century saw a scientific revolution, especially with Physics being an incredibly rapidly-growing field (remember Einstein?).

Therefore, with the world and thus the Nobel committee being highly interested in it, they were fast at recognizing achievements so they could help advancing the field.

On the other hand, in the Field of Peace, the story is quite different, having laureates follow the reverse aging trend, as seen below.

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A possible explanation of this shows perhaps another trend of the world today, where a fast recognition of breakthroughs that might help our world stay a stable place, so that we do not repeat the mistakes of our past, is deemed of utmost importance.

The Peace Prize Committee will not wait to see if a worthwhile peace measure will succeed completely over 20 years, but instead choose to reward it timely, so that such endeavors are encouraged.

Perhaps the most striking example of this is the story of the youngest laureate to win a Nobel Prize award to date, Malala Yousafzai, who was only 17 at the time of receiving her Nobel Prize award.

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Speaking of striking trends, and with the example of a female laureate above, what does the male to female ratio look like in the Nobel Prize world?

Like with all the other trends, the subject of gender gaps across our history is also part of the Nobel Prize story.

So, despite all the present humanitarian efforts of the world to bridge these gaps, due to potential Nobel laureates having to wait years for a prize, the currently highly unbalanced pyramid below depicts how the world looked a few decades ago.

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However, this is changing, as you can see in the line chart below, which has largely been supported by the fields in which females see the highest representation, namely Literature and Peace:

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Even though men are still much more numerous in science, diversity is improving and the backlog for prizes (prizes carrying over from the past) is clearing, which will likely slowly make room for more female representation in the Nobel Prize.

One story that stands out on this subject is that of Marie Curie, the first female awarded a Nobel Prize, in 1903. When she was not nominated for the prize that year, her husband and a fellow spontaneous radiation researcher protested and refused the award, which forced the panel, relying on a technicality, to accept her late submission from 1902.

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It seems that people all over the world are able to be awarded a Nobel Prize, are there countries that stand out in terms of how many laureates they have had?

This can be looked from two different angles: we can simply assess the highest number of laureates in each country, which will yield the bar chart on the right:

Or, perhaps more accurately, we can look at the number of laureates per 10 million people from their own country:

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What does it take to be awarded a Nobel Prize?
what is the motivation behind having your work recognized in such a way?

Certainly, a lot of spectacular work goes into making a breakthrough and being awarded a Nobel Prize. Behind all awards there are advancements in their respective fields, as well as a general contribution to the overall progress of the world. All this information, as well as lectures, photo gallery, and other resources, are available from the Nobel Prize Organization.

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All of this work entails the publication of (usually numerous) articles, out of which far fewer are deemed worthy of a Nobel Prize.

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So, given all of this, what are my chances of being awarded a Nobel Prize in my lifetime?

You can play around a bit and see what other people with your specific background (from the same country, of the same gender and in the same age group) have won a Nobel Prize, and calculate your chances from there.

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What motivated you to research this subject?

We were curious. We wanted to know about those who, in the silence of their laboratories and offices, or in the headlights of this world's tumultuous tendencies, help us stay the course.

We have answered some of the questions we had, but also raised new ones.

Do you have any unanswered questions?

Our purpose was to also give birth to a project that can inform people on this particular subject.

So hopefully, you can take away your own bits that spark an interest in you from this story. Here's some facts that we think our project can offer someone who is not familiar with the Nobel Prize:

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• The work behind this decade's Nobel Prize winners, as well as their bio
• Who in your country has won a Nobel Prize
• How many women have won a Nobel Prize, and who was the first
• The motivation behind every Nobel Prize awarded
• Who is the youngest or oldest laureates by fields, or by country
• Who has been awarded more than 1 Nobel Prize
• The articles published by Nobel Prize laureates in Chemistry, Physics and Medicine
• Who has been awarded a Nobel Prize in your country

Data sources: https://www.nobelprize.org/about/developer-zone-2, https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/6NJ5RN, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL

Authors: Vlad Mihanta, Andreea Cotfas, Bianca Banica